Adventures in Chinese cooking, attempt deux.

One of the few bonuses of having our parents attempting to move in the spring is the wealth of stuff that is now up for grabs. I've been slowly accumulating some favorite furniture and knick knacks out of the basement, and had the fortune to find my giant Chinese cookbook in the process. I've always appreciated cookbooks with CLEAR instructions and tips and tricks, both of which this book has. It also doubles as a coffee table book due to its beautiful pictures, and a coffee table if you put some legs under it. This thing weighs a ton.

The Food of China, photos by Jason Lowe, recipes by Deh-Ta Hsuing and Nina Simonds

I've been meaning to try and make congee for a long time now. For some reason I always thought it was a hard thing to make, although clearly I was delusional. It just takes a while. The Risotto of China. Or rice porridge. Risotto sounds nicer. This recipe is also only for 4 servings, unlike the mega bowls you get at Chinese restaurants. There's nothing wrong with the mega bowls, but it helps if you have six to seven people, versus the one that I'd be feeding. I halved this recipe, and it was a great dinner and leftover lunch the next day.


Plain Congee, with accompaniments
Serves 4

220 g (1 cup) of short-grain rice
2.25 litres (9 cups) chicken stock or water
light soy sauce, to taste
sesame oil, to taste

Toppings!
3 spring onions (Green onions? Are these not the same thing?) chopped
4 tablespoons chopped coriander (ignore)
30 g (1 oz) slicked pickled ginger (I used fresh)
4 tablespoons finely chopped preserved turnip (didn't have)
4 tablespoons roasted peanuts (didn't have these either)
2 one-thousand year old eggs, cut into slivers (really?)
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds (nope)
2 fried dough sticks, sliced diagonally (hate these things)
[I added 2 cloves of chopped garlic. Because I'm like that]

Put rice in a bowl and, using your fingers as a rake, rinse under cold running water to remove any dust. Drain rice in a colander. Place in a clay pot (if you're authentic), casserole or large saucepan and stir in water/chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer very gently, stirring occasionally, for 1 3/4 to 2 hours, or until it has a porridge-like texture and the rice is breaking up.

Add a sprinkling of soy sauce, sesame oil and white pepper (if you're fancy and have many kinds of pepper)  to season the congee. The congee can be served plain, or choose a selection from the toppings listed and serve in bowls alongside the congee for guests to help themselves.

As you can see form the pictures, I added shrimp. Normally, they taste great in congee. According to the seafood congee recipe underneath the regular one, you add the uncooked shrimp at the end, bring the congee back up to a boil, and cook them in the congee directly for about a minute. I discovered that this was mildly dangerous, since the congee bubbled and exploded frequently, and didn't really taste that exciting. I may stick with plain and toppings from now on. Otherwise however, this turned out great! I can see this being done frequently during the upcoming winter, especially now that I go to Bulkbarn regularly.


Also, December starts on Saturday. I've waited long enough to start holiday posts. You've been warned. Again.

Also, the chicken survived!

Adventures in Chinese cooking, attempt one.

I really like Chinese food. This is a fairly general statement, I'm ware, but generally speaking, I enjoy and will eat most to all Chinese dishes that are put in front of me. With the exception of tripe. That  was unpleasant.

I was perusing my usual run of blogs one day, and found this recipe for Egg Drop Soup on The Kitchn's blog. Egg Drop soup is one of those things that I've usually like (there have been some bad ones over the years), and have always wondered how to make it properly. Emma's instruction are nice and clear, and her tip for pouring the eggs properly into the soup is genius. Her recipe also includes a full list of the ingredients that can be used to make this soup, and I'm sure everyone has their own variations I've put mine at the end of her recipe. I was quite pleased with my combo.

Egg Drop Soup
Serves 4 as an appetizer or 2 for a light dinner

  Base Ingredients
4 cups (32 oz) chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 to 4 large eggs
Salt or soy sauce

Flavoring Extras - Use one or all
1/2" fresh ginger, peeled and cut into rounds
1 stem lemongrass, bruised
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
2 star anise
6-8 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons miso

Soup Extras - Use one or all
1/2 block (7-8 oz) extra-firm tofu, cut into bite-sized pieces
8 oz mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 bunch baby bok choy, thinly sliced
4 spring onions, thinly sliced

Pour the stock into a saucepan and place over medium-high heat. Put the smaller flavoring extras you're using into a tea ball or spice bag. Add all your flavoring extras to the saucepan with the stock. Turn down the heat to medium-low and simmer for 15 minutes. Scoop out all the flavoring extras with a slotted spoon. Taste and add salt or soy sauce as needed.

Add any soup extras to the stock and simmer for five minutes. Save some scallions for sprinkling on top of the soup at the end.

Scoop out 1/4 cup or so of the stock and whisk it with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch in a small bowl. Whisk this back into the stock and let it simmer for a minute or two until the broth no longer tastes starchy.

Whisk together the eggs in a small bowl with the remaining teaspoon of cornstarch. Make sure your soup is at a bare simmer. Holding a fork over the bowl (see photo), pour the eggs slowly through the tines. Whisk the broth gently with your other hand as you pour. Let the soup stand for a few seconds to finish cooking the eggs.

Serve immediately, topped with thinly sliced scallions.

"This recipe will make four small cups of soup, but can be easily scaled up if you have more guests at your table. I generally use 1 to 2 cups of broth and one egg per person.
One last parting note: this is not a soup that keeps well. It's best poured straight from the saucepan into the serving bowls and then eaten as soon as it's cool enough to swallow."

The version that I did was this!
Flavoring Extras - Use one or all
ginger,
garlic,
2 point of star anise,
1/3 of a cinnamon stick ish,
1 tablespoon soy sauce,
2 tablespoons miso,

Soup Extras - Use one or all
2 dried shitaki mushrooms, thinly sliced (don't do this, not ideal),
small handful of leftover enoki mushrooms from a hotpot night last week,
4 spring onions, thinly sliced

The pringles are optional, and not recommended for the soup.

It's November?

So yeah, that whole blogging thing.

Ye olde month of October was a bit busy, on all fronts. I'm sorry.

Also, since it is now November, and Christmas season has started, so there will be a few Christmas stuff posts in the upcoming weeks. You've been warned.

The beginning of the month saw me at my first executive meeting for the Photographical Historic Society of Canada, because I am their new Image Curator for the Spring Photo Show! I am also acting as a content manager for an exhibition in the spring that will e using the various collections of various members. I'm attempting to change a few things about the Spring Image show, all of which will hopefully result in better attendance. We shall see.

The middle of October saw a busy 2 weeks! I have returned to the great world of paid employment (finally) and am back at an Art Gallery I worked at before and during my graduate degree. This coincided with the week that I GRADUATED with my Master's degree and went to my first, adult wedding. The vintage dress I had hoped to wear was not going to happen, but the back-up dress I ordered from Eshakti turned out to be amazing. I ended up wearing it to both events. And I wore heels. Both times. My feet really hated me by Sunday morning.

I have no pictures of the graduation ceremony, since I was mildly distracted by seeing all my classmates again for the first time in months. We spent most of the afternoon calling each other "Master," fussing over the gowns and hoods and hugging each other frequently. We survived getting a Master's. I almost cried when I saw my parents after the ceremony. Almost. Saved it for the wedding a few days later.

Two days later my best friend from highschool/undergrad got married. They had a lovely, short ceremony in the church that we grew up in in Mississauga, and a fun little reception several hours later in another town. If I sound slightly bitter about that, I am. I love them dearly, and am so proud of the two of them, but arranging transport and dealing with the 4 hour break in-between when you don't drive was a little annoying. I wanted my date (who was a friend of mine that I borrowed from his girlfriend for the day) to be able to drink since he'd never met these people, so that eliminated him driving too. Thankfully my Dad offered to ferry us around all afternoon. Thanks Dad!

The only picture I got during the wedding. Seriously. Was a little busy beaming with pride over Brendan and Kathryn. And then crying during their vows.

St. Stephen's on the Hill. Actually on a hill, cannot be seen form the road as our cab driver proved.

 

 

And then of course, Halloween. My costume was a bit last minute this year, surprise surprise. I had been rummaging through my closet and found my old chicken purse. I love that purse. and haven't used it very much. It was the key prop in a Halloween costume from almost four years ago when I dressed up as a farmer. Creative, I know. It was about 5 days before Halloween when I remembered that I needed a costume since we were going out and figured I'd just do the farmer again. My roommate was not impressed by this idea, and after some further searching on how to incorporate chicken into a costume, we came across the Robot Chicken mad scientist. Perfect. I just needed a lab coat, black work gloves and boots and a wig, and then make a costume for my chicken. 

Ze chicken, with some of the tools used to give him his costume. Those wings are pockets. Amazing.

The rest of the ingredients for this outfit. Most of which were found at the local dollarama.

I opened up a paper bag and painted it to recreate the Chicken's metal parts. I wanted this costume to be as reversible as possible so my chicken purse wouldn't be modified. 

 Scrunch up for added texture.

I added some black and gold with a really dry paint brush to give some more depth to the metal.

And scrunched again.

Then I cut up the pieces to vaguely resemble where the metal is on the real Robot Chicken chicken, and held them on with a few small whip stitches. I'm hoping (haven't done this yet) that I can just snip some of the threads and pull these all off later.

The 'eye' is a giant plastic rhinestone I'm probably going to salvage when I take his costume apart. 

All in all, I think it worked out well. Again, I have no pictures of the night itself. I think my roommate may still have a group portrait of the 4 of us that went out that night, I'll see if I can find it.

Here's hoping I can be a little more diligent with the blogging in the upcoming months.

 

Late night Indian fry up!

Holy lack of grocery shopping Batman!

Being hungry past when the grocery store is closed is probably a good thing, it forced me to use some of the stuff in the fridge. Tonight's challenge: half a block of paneer, 1 potato, peanut oil, some spices, a hint of lemon juice, a sliver of yellow onion, most of one green onion and a hard boiled egg.

Now, that ingredients list is alarmingly similar to a dish I've made before, specifically here. This is really just a variation of that. The lack of enthusiasm to fry my eggs also helped. I have some hard boiled eggs in the fridge for emergency sandwiches right now, so they worked beautifully.

Potato Paneer Egg thing,
Serves 1

1 medium sized potato, cubed into 1cm x 1cm pieces, ish,
1/2 block of paneer, leftover from the Saag Paneer recipe, cubed into 1cm x 1cm pieces, ish,
1 hard boiled egg, quartered a few times
1/4 tps of cinnamon, cumin, tumeric and coriander,
1 green onion, sliced
1 slice of white or yellow onion, chopped
3/4 tps ish of lemon juice,
Peanut oil for pan

Soak potatoes in cold water with some ice cubes for at least 15 minutes to remove excess starch. Rinse, and boil in salted water until soft throughout when poked with knife. Drain and set aside.

Heat frying pan and peanut oil at medium high heat. Add spice mixture of cinnamon, cumin, tumeric and coriander to oil, and stir fry for 1 minute.

Add yellow/white onions to pan and stir for one minute to mix with spices. Add potatoes and stir for a few minutes. They will break up, that's okay. As they start to brown a bit, add paneer and stir. Reduce heat to lo-medium and heat through.

Add green onions, lemon juice and egg, and heat through. Serve warm!

 Tastes far more appetizing than it looks, honest.

Wedding bits!

Before I get to the wedding stuff,

I'M DONE MY THESIS!!!!!!!

This is also the reason why I didn't post last week, too busy celebrating!I'll post a link to the library listing when it goes up. Kinda excited about that.

On to the wedding bits.

My best friend is getting married next month! I'm super excited and happy for him! It also means I'm really an adult now, my friends are getting married. Weird.

Gift buying time! I got something small off their registry that I could add some more personal gifts too. I'm also sure that neither of them read this blog, let along know it exists, so I can put pictures up with no concern for spoiling the surprise! I lucked out with the tea pot on the registry, totally appropriate for me to give them, and it was on sale when I bought it. It's a really lovely cherry red, which seems to be their accent colour for a black and chrome kitchen. I decided to add a more personalized gift to the tea pot by adding these beautiful antique, French tea towels.

These lovely things from GoshnPoche on etsy are linen in a creamy colour with beautiful stripes on them. They may not make it the wedding. Just sayin'.

Now, for the more important aspect of the day, my outfit (ha)! I have a dress I want to wear, but doesn't quite fit. I bought a beautiful black and blue vintage dress from the Clothing show years ago, and it fit back then no problem. Sadly, my master's degree happened, as well as about 20 lbs of weight gain. I've lost some of it... enough that the dress almost fits again. If I can drop an inch or so off my chest (ha) by the first week of October, I'm good. I've been trying to exercise more and eat better anyway to counteract the master's degree. Fingers crossed.

Should that not work, I did just buy this!

Eshatki is a website I've been looking at for a while, but have been a little apprehensive about buying anything from. Lovely stuff, but a bit expensive for my unemployed self. However, many of the bloggers I follow have made purchases from eshatki, and can't stop raving about the products and customer service. When I was perusing them this past week and found this dress on clearance sale and still in my size, I figured this was a good time to try them out. Now, I just have to wait for it to arrive. The accessories and shoes I've picked for my other dress choice should still work with this one no problem. Should I lose the weight for the that dress, I will wear this for my convocation, which is two days before the wedding.

The only issue I now have, is which petticoat do I want to get to go with it! I know, I'm weirdly, really into fashion and vintage fashion right now. Too many vintage fashion blogs. I'm torn between two colours in the Domino Dollhouse range.

Black, more versatile but now sold out in my size...

or Peacock blue, really fun, fairly versatile with my current wardrobe, goes beautifully with the black dress and available in my size.

The pros are stacking up for Peacock. I met a girl at a bar recently who was wearing a Domino Dollhouse dress, and was able to stalk her and ask about their fit. She raved about them and confirmed that their measurements are true to size, unlike my Torrid problem from last year.

Decisions!!

A rainy weekend.

So. Close. So. Unbelievably. Close.

I'm proof reading my thesis, for hopefully the last time. I'm slightly concerned with the amount of spelling and repetition errors I've been finding. And that I've been finding them. I'm too cheap for an editor, so I'm just reading mine out loud. This works surprisingly well.

It's been a bit wet this past weekend, so I've been trying to fill the time with some cooking and home projects that have been on the back burner for a very, very long time.

First off was some pie! It's getting towards the end of the peach season around here, so I've been making peach pies to celebrate/mourn. Same old recipe, same awesome results. It was way to humid for me to be making pastry though, so the top became a patch work design since I couldn't get it off the counter if my life depended on it.

 THAT'S what real pastry is made of. LARD.

One of the two main things I took on while the rain came down was to replant most of the window garden into larger pots. Apparently I waited a little too long for some of them, I had to dig the Aloe out of the pot since it had virtually grown into it. The rosemary really like this idea, it's done well and deserved more space.

The second thing has been working on a few things to beautify our entrance way in the apartment. It's pretty ugly, and now that the gerbils have been moved, it's empty and ugly. I've been thinking of adding a basket or box to catch the junkmail, a print or poster to brighten it up a bit and a rack to hold extra keys and other important stuff. Since it was raining this Sunday, I decided to work on the rack and give it a coat of paint.

This is totally one of the racks from an old Ikea shoe rack that I found at the side of road on the walk home one day. Yep.

Tape that bitch.

First coat of the orange.

And ze gold. Hawt.

 

Let's see how this turns out. I have some hooks and clothespins to stick onto this thing when it's painted.